Xenon-cameraphone fan though I am, it has to be said that at my advanced(!) age and with family responsibilities, I don't get to party til 3am anymore (though see here from 7.45pm tomorrow!), so don't really get a chance to see what the likes of the Nokia N8 can really do in near pitch darkness with real people (as opposed to pot plants and fans!). Luckily, Jay Montano shares my love of Xenon and has put up a feast of N8 Xenon-lit party shots from Halloween, last night. What's even more impressive than the lighting and 'freezing' in time is the power management - seems like the N8 took over 300 photos with Xenon flash without breaking sweat...
Sometimes you need to get to your music player fast on your touchscreen Symbian phone. You could use the multi-task bar or homescreen widget, but Fone Arena have had a look at Music Bar, which will 'temporarily ‘re-program’ one of the physical buttons on smartphones like the N8 to pop up the basic music controls on screen. It’s rough and ready, but if you must, it’ll do the job.
Seemingly now rolled out to all Nokia N8s (from an unscientific editorial survey!), there's a 3.3MB 'Phone apps' update available over the air, listed in the 'SW update' application. As you'll see from the screenshots below, the update 'improves the stability of the phone applications'. This should mean that the N8 runs more smoothly than previously, although most of the changes will be invisible to the end user.
My day just got off to a potentially great start. Opera has just released a beta of their proxy-based (read time and money saving) Opera Mini web browser for all Symbian phones. And not just for these phones, but written as a native Symbian application and not as a Java application, so we're talking faster startup times and smoother browsing. Plus you can now switch all text input to use your phone's native system, even T9. And compatibility is, amazingly, right back to Series 60 (effectively S60 2nd Edition). With Web receiving criticism for slow handling of huge web pages, Opera Mini 5.1 beta on Symbian impresses by being many times faster than any native browser on any platform. Some screenshots, links and details below.
Nokia's Social networking application for its Symbian^3 devices (so far, the Nokia N8 and Nokia C7) has been updated to version 1.2. The most notable update is the ability to upload and share images and videos to social networks (Twitter and Facebook) directly from the Photos and Camera applications. Additionally, the overall UI of the application has been improved, with easier finger touch interaction and the use of larger font sizes (thankfully). Also updated is the homescreen widget and the process to link social network profiles to entries in the Contacts application.
Possibly of most interest to developers and those 'in' the industry, I wanted to flag up that, despite all recent announcements and speculation, The Symbian Foundation's SEE 2010 event takes place on the 9th and 10th of November at the Beurs van Berlage in Amsterdam, billed as "the only event dedicated to bringing the Symbian community together and providing unique knowledge and insight from industry experts". Attendance is free to all, as usual. Some more details below.
New(ish) in Nokia's Ovi Store are a number of interesting free and commercial 'casual'/'traditional' games from Offscreen Technologies, available for both S60 5th Edition and new Symbian^3 phones from Nokia, including Freecell, (peg) Solitaire, Video Poker and Checkers. See below for screens, mini-reviews and links. And yes, full reviews of some of the big blockbuster 'HD' games are progressing in parallel, to be published over the next couple of weeks!
Although Rafe and I have had the Nokia N8 for close to a month now, neither of us has got round to disassembling the bottom to test removal/exchange of the BL-4D battery. Partly because there's a question mark over whether this does in fact void the warranty, but mainly because the battery life is so good that neither of us has missed not being able to swap cells. In any case, Micky Aldridge has gone where we feared to tread and I've embedded his video below, showing removal and replacement. Looks like a 5 minute job at most, should your N8 battery ever degrade or fail.
The full version of Angry Birds, the smash-hit mobile game and productivity destroyer, is now available in the Ovi Store, at at cost of £3. In the game you help the Birds take revenge on the Pigs for stealing their eggs. Across the 105 different levels, you use the destructive power of the Birds to knock down walls, castles and more to reach the thieves. Angry Birds is highly addictive and very popular, however there are those who feel it glamorises Avian-Porcine conflict.
Nokia today made an announcement that clarifies and simplifies its developer and software platform strategy. Nokia will focus on Qt as the sole application development framework across both MeeGo and Symbian, reinforcing and accelerating Nokia's previous commitment to it. Nokia will also develop its own future UI applications using Qt.
The planned and future development of the higher layers of Symbian OS itself will also rely heavily on Qt; Nokia says this will "allow a continuous improvement of the Symbian experience" and, critically, will be compatible with the existing Symbian^3 platform and devices. This will mean that existing Symbian^3 devices will be included in future updates and will receive many of the user experience and application improvements originally planned for Symbian^4. Going forward, Nokia will simply refer to the platform as 'Symbian', without any version specifics.
Nokia has released their Q3 2010 results, reporting an operating profit of €529 million, with net sales of €10.3 billion. Nokia's device and service division's profits were €807 million, up 3% year on year. Margins in devices and services were 10.5% (down 0.9% YoY and up 0.9% QoQ). The figures beat market expectations. Converged devices sales (smartphones) were significantly up, at 26.5 million, compared with 16.4 million units in Q3 2009 (up 61% YoY) and compared with 24 million units in Q2 2010 (up 10%, QoQ). Worldwide smartphone market share was 38%, down 3% sequentially but up 2% year on year.
While the previous Ovi Calendar (version 1.6) that was in the Nokia Beta Labs is now in general use, it’s time for the next version to be subject to public test. So Ovi Calendar 2.0 is now available for public testing at the Beta Labs. Adding in new facilities to invite people to meetings and events, attendance at events, manage public calendars, and a raft of user interface tweaks.
I'd been meaning to write up the Socially app for S60 and Symbian for a while, but now I don't have to because Vaibhav beat me to it. In this case he's showing how to automatically sync Facebook photos and birthdays into your Symbian Contacts application on the N8, but compatibility is surprisingly wide. With Nokia Social on the new Symbian^3 devices being somewhat limited in its Facebook integration, Socially promises to help extend the concept, plus it has a few extra tricks up its sleeve, as Vaibhav reveals.
Forum Nokia has released a package of software for Symbian^3 devices that enable developers to test Qt 4.7.0 applications on the Nokia N8 and other Symbian^3 devices. The package consists of two sets of SIS files, one to install Qt 4.7.0 and another to revert back to Qt 4.6 (the version of Qt shipped with the device) if needed.
Symbian utility specialists Cellphonesoft have come up with another possible touchscreen front-end, this time based around a single touch in the top left corner of your screen, which brings up their new 'Instant Menu', with application shortcuts and some utility functions. Some more details below.
